One of the most difficult things to do after a relationship is over is to remain friends with your former spouse or partner. This can be a very complex matter, especially if the partnership ended through a court process with lawyers representing each party. We all realize that a lawyer’s sole purpose is to get the best deal possible for their client, so they may not be concerned in most cases, with the emotional bond that exists or existed before the relationship ended. They simply want what is best for their client, and it should come as no surprise that their own self interest is part of the equation.

Find a way to maintain a friendship

If a breakup isn’t the result of emotional or physical abuse, and the couple remains civil with each other, the best case scenario is to find a way to maintain a friendship. This is especially true when young children are involved. Children are very impressionable, especially at an early age, and can be manipulated intentionally or even unintentionally when one parent holds a grudge against the other. Sadly often in a broken down relationship, one parent will deliberately use a child as a pawn to turn them against the other parent.

Never use the children to try to hurt your ex partner

Whether it’s resentment due to jealousy or a means of revenge, attempting to hurt an ex partner emotionally or otherwise, is fundamentally wrong. Unfortunately this type of immature behavior may have a long term negative impact on a child, by being denied the opportunity to build a strong relationship with a responsible parent. Emotional warfare can easily backfire when the child reaches maturity and realizes they have been used for this destructive purpose. Then resentment towards the offending parent is very likely to take place and may not be reversible.

Try to maintain a sense of security and stability for the children

What adults sometimes forget is that their children are also dealing with a divorce, and can be harboring fears of what may happen in the future, after their parents separate. This is why it is fundamentally important to remain on good terms with your ex in order to maintain a sense of security, especially for younger children. It is also very difficult for children to take sides in a dispute between parents, as they are emotionally attached to both. For this reason, and no matter how difficult it is, parents must strive to respect one another in order to reinforce a balanced relationship with each other and their children, as they grow older.

Meeting someone else

Eventually, both separated individuals are likely to meet another person and begin a new relationship. Hopefully if a separated couple has been open and honest and shown respect towards each other, this should be a smooth transition period. However, it’s also a little more complicated now that one has to consider their new partner’s feelings about an ongoing relationship with an ex wife or husband. There isn’t a secret formula for the success of a relationship, however the key to maintaining a happy one means building trust. One must tell their new partner that the former relationship is truly over and the reason for keeping in contact is solely for the purpose of maintaining a good relationship with their children.

Honesty and communication build trust, and if two people share this view, they may avoid the mistakes of the past and create a successful happy new life together.

Breaking Up Abuse, Breaking Up, Divorce, Kids, Lawyers

This should come as no surprise at all to anyone who has spent even a little bit of time online visiting social networking sites and online dating sites. The information posted on these sites is rapidly becoming a primary source of evidence used by divorce lawyers in their filings of client divorce papers.

The reason is simple, of course. Cheaters, unhappy spouses, and others looking for “alternatives” to their current relationship make up a large percentage of people using these kinds of sites, which means they are putting themselves out there for others to find and meet. As long a their activities remain a secret from their partner, it’s not a problem; but once that partner gets a whiff of something suspicious it only takes a quick and easy search to start finding online evidence of misdeeds.

Lawyers are well aware of this, too, and more and more of them are including online searches as a standard part of their services when it comes to divorce filings. In fact, according to one of the leading professional legal associations up to 81% of divorce lawyers use some form of online research to specifically look for this kind of evidence in order to use it to benefit their clients. Facebook.com was the site most often cited as a great source of this kind of evidence, followed closely by MySpace.com and Twitter.com.

So what’s the lesson here? If you’re cheating, fair warning: anything you have out there is going to be found. And if you’re the partner being cheated on? Better check with your lawyer to make sure he or she is going to include this kind of search as part of their professional services.

Divorce Cheating, Divorce, Lawyers, Searches, Social Networking